Afghan and Allied Forces Begin to Secure Taliban Stronghold

By

Michael M. Phillips in Marjah, Afghanistan and

Matthew Rosenberg in Kabul

Updated Feb. 14, 2010 1:45 a.m. ET

MARJAH, Afghanistan -- U.S., Afghan and British troops were in the early stages of securing the town of Marjah Saturday, with thousands of infantrymen moving in on foot after helicopter-born soldiers seized two central shopping bazaars.

The airborne troops landed before dawn, opening the first major military push in the latest surge of U.S. and allied forces into Afghanistan. So far, the troops have encountered only hit-and-run resistance from Taliban fighters, who have been taking potshots from compounds before moving out as the allied troops returned fire. Afghan officials said five Taliban had been killed; there was no word on coalition casualties.

The ground troops took several hours to breach the town limits, with an exercise that included constructing two tank-mounted bridges to cross a canal and sweeping for improvised explosive devices, or IEDS, the major threat to allied troop. Commanders believe the town is wired with booby traps and mines.

"The operation went without a single hitch," British Maj. Gen Nick Carter, the top North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander in southern Afghanistan, told reporters hours after the assault began.

A new offensive against the Taliban in Marjah could be a turning point in the war in Afghanistan. But WSJ's Paul Beckett says the military push is also a big test for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and fraught with peril for U.S. and Afghan troops.

"We've caught the insurgents on the hoof, and they're completely dislocated," he said in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where Marjah is located.

The insurgents adopted tactics to try to slow the coalition advance with a guerrilla campaign of hit and run attacks with rifles, machine guns and hidden bombs. "It's exactly what we expected," said Lt. Col. Calvin Worth, commander of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine regiment.

Moving Into Marjah

A sergeant pointed out buildings he suspected were held by the Taliban to his fellow Marines after their group came under fire outside Marjah. Bryan Denton for The Wall Street Journal

The Campaign in Helmand

Regional Violence

Explosive disposal teams had to detonate several booby traps as soon as the Marines crossed the pair of make-shift bridges over the main irrigation canal into Marjah. They discovered one bomb suspended in a tree.

The bombs and ambushes succeeded in slowing, but not stopping, the ground attack. Marines seized a key crossroads at the entrance to the town.

One Marine and one interpreter were wounded by roadside bomb strikes, while another was hit by fire from a rocket-propelled grenade. The U.S. troops believe they killed several Taliban fighters.

The firefight quickly took on a familiar pattern, with insurgents firing rifles from mud-walled compounds and disappearing soon after coalition forces returned fire.

In the late afternoon, one U.S. platoon found itself briefly pinned down by one such ambush, but was able to beat back the attack and advance across the muddy field with the help of smoke canisters fired by artillery.

There was little doubt the massive allied force – some 9,500 U.S. Marines and Afghan and British soldiers were actively taking part in the fight with a few thousand allied troops arrayed behind them in support – would overcome the estimated 400 to 1,000 Taliban fighters defending Marjah and surrounding villages and farms. Coalition commanders said they expected to push through the area in a matter days followed by weeks of defusing bombs and eliminating pockets of resistance in Marjah. The town is last major Taliban bastion in the Helmand River Valley, a strategic southern region that was until this past summer largely held by the militants.

Unlike previous clearing operations, coalition forces will remain in Marjah for months to come instead of simply moving on to other fights and leaving the area open to a Taliban resurgence. Commanders say the true measure of their success will be how well they help the Afghan government re-establish a credible government in the town, where the militants have held nearly unquestioned sway for more than two years.

Plans are already in place to roll out a ready-made administration in the coming days and pour millions of dollars of aid money into the area. Hundreds of police will be brought in and hundreds more recruited from among Marjah's people while authorities rebuild damaged homes, fix agricultural infrastructure, and provide quick cash-for-work opportunities for locals. The aim is to make Marjah a model that will show wary Afghans what can be accomplished if they cooperate with the thousands of fresh NATO troops arriving in Afghanistan.

"Everybody needs to understand that it's not so much the clear phase that's decisive. It's the hold phase," Gen Carter said.

But before Marjah can be held, it must be cleared and that operation was unfolding methodically Saturday.

The assault came from all sides. Marine engineers driving special mine-clearing vehicles, mounted on tank chassis, plowed a path through deeply furrowed farm fields into the outskirts of town. When they reached a suspected minefield, they launched a series of rockets that deployed 350-foot cables of plastic explosives, resembling long sausage links. The resulting explosion was intended to ignite any roadside bombs planted in the Marines' path.

U.S. commanders considered buried bombs and other booby-traps to be the biggest danger to the assault force, and they predicted the belt of land mines on the outskirts of town would be the biggest ever breached by NATO troops. They said they expected roads, homes and fields to be seeded with the weapons, and planned an enormous engineering effort against the explosives.

The Marines used portable aluminum footbridges to cross irrigation ditches and avoid booby-trapped crossings. Heavy tracked vehicles unfolded larger bridges to allow armored troop carriers to cross the 20-foot-wide Trek Shabur canal that surrounds Marjah, part of a huge irrigation project funded by U.S. foreign aid in the 1950s.

Once the way was clear, infantrymen poured through the gap and pushed toward Highway 605, the main north-south corridor through town, searching houses and walled compounds as they walked. Marjah has a population of some 75,000, spread out over a vaguely rectangular area some 12 miles north to south, and about six miles wide at points. Much of the town is farmland, with a few clusters of houses and shops.

Taliban commanders, reached by telephone, insisted they could hold off the allied advance, although they acknowledged that allied forces had taken at least one of Marjah's bazaars. They decried what they claimed was the harassment of civilians by coalition forces and the indiscriminate shooting and bombing by the forces troops invading Marjah.

Coalition forces "are bombing and launching rockets on Marjah. Americans are searching people's houses and bothering them," said Mullah Abdullah Kako Rahmani, a Taliban commander from Nad Ali district. "We will fight against them until the lost drop of blood of our life. We are in an emergency situation now."

Under an approach unveiled late last year, the coalition is concentrating its forces, including the fresh surge troops, on the two southern population centers: Kandahar city and the central Helmand River Valley. The coalition has gradually cleared Helmand River Valley; Marjah was the only town in valley they still fully controlled.

The strategy should force the insurgents into more isolated areas and allow the Afghan government time to solidify its shaky authority in a broad arc of territory that is home to more than 80% of southern Afghanistan's population and its main transport and trade routes. Taking it away from the militants may prompt some to consider giving up the fight, even if top Taliban leaders remain defiant, senior NATO officers say.

"After the area is cleansed of Taliban and the displaced people are back, we will start the next phase of the operation. We hope that most of the insurgents lay down their weapons and reintegrate," Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, told reporters in Kabul.

Afghan and coalition forces didn't carry out such operations in the past because they never "had enough soldiers," he said. This time, he said "people will realize that their government is there for them.

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